The most likely culprit was Beth Hyland (@bethjhyland), who appears to have coined it as part of wider discussion, which occurrence was tweeted soon after by Rob (@Like_Rob) who claims to have “witnessed” it’s birth, whence Beth also tweeted a definition – “an instrument of science and the future” which I find quite resonant. The rest of the class immediately adopted the term, and it was a bit of a running gag thereafter. So much so, in fact, that these wonderful maniac students decided to immortalise the idea as a parting post-graduation present. How wonderfully preposterous! 🙂

The image at left was taken by Rob at the after-graduation celebrations when several of this unit’s cohort graduated with a Master of Strategic Foresight (some with a combined MSF/MBA).

I had previously set up a blog called Preposterous!futures for examining ideas about the future that lie outside of the ordinary. But, seeing this nickname re-surface – along with a professionally-drawn caricature, no less! – I realised that I simply had to adopt this term as the name of a blog that would look at absolutely everything in space and time, including the future, and that Preposterous! futureswould then more clearly be just one category of exploration, among many, many others. It took a bit of time for this arrangement to take shape, but… as we tell our students in our foresight courses: “trust emergence” 🙂